Game of Thrones creators know what fans are saying about them, for sure. When controversial things happen to characters like Cersei and Sansa and fans speak out, the show-runners often respond, usually defending their right to tell uncomfortable stories and emphasizing their efforts to tell them in the most sensitive and thoughtful way possible. Late last year it looked like they were responding in an even more direct way—director Jeremy Podeswa said that show-runners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff were “responsive to the discussion” around Sansa Stark’s rape at the hands of Ramsay Bolton, and that “there were a couple of things that changed as a result.” What those things were, Podeswa didn’t say—and now Benioff and Weiss have stepped in to say, actually, there weren’t any changes after all.

“That’s just not a factual statement,” Weiss told Entertainment Weekly, while going out of his way to avoid throwing Podeswa under the bus (“It’s hard to know what the context was” etc.). Benioff continued, “The thing that’s slightly frustrating is the idea that we’re responding to criticism from last year, so therefore we’re going to beef up the female roles—that’s blatantly untrue.” What happens this year, Benioff said, is “not a response” to criticism, but part of a story that has been in the works for several years—something the show-runners have often emphasized when asking viewers not to react too strongly to single moments within the long-running narrative. “It’s not in any way a response to online criticism, or any other type of criticism,” Benioff added.

And then Weiss again, for good measure: “I can literally say that not one word of the scripts this season have been changed in any way, shape or form by what people said on the Internet, or elsewhere.”

Benioff and Weiss are rightly hesitant to give viewers, particularly the ones most vocal online (like us!), a sense of power over their show’s narrative. Show-runners are inherently protective over their stories, and are often right that they know what they’re doing even when fans doubt them—for every Damon Lindelof, who openly admitted that criticism of Season 1 led to a much stronger Season 2, there are many more David Chases who would rather not hear from their fans ever again. Game of Thrones may be the most scrutinized show on television, and for Benioff and Weiss to allow that any of that scrutiny affects their process would only open the door to much more, until you have people howling online that they didn’t take seriously their requests that the Hound come back to life as a direwolf.

Then again, Game of Thrones has been under fire for its depiction of women since the very beginning, and at some point some kind of response from the writers—other than “the show depicts a brutal world where horrible things happen”—might go a long way to prove that they are not, as a rule, invested in inflicting violence on all of their female characters. Entertainment Weekly’s cover story on the women of Game of Thrones suggests it will be a big year for Sansa, Cersei, and other women who were victimized last year. But if you find yourself happier with the show’s direction this spring, don’t give your angry tweets too much of the credit.